I reach into my drawer and pull out another Kit Kat from the cellophane pack of eight. The cunt who invented the Kit Kat ought to be fuckin well knighted. I get through loads of them. Fuck knows why I dinnae put on loads ay beef. Fast metabolism, I suppose. – Aye. Awright. But I’ll tell you one thing Chrissie. I am not, repeat not, in the mood for mind games. I’m not going to be exploited by you because I’ve made my feelings for you plain. I’ll keep a tight rein on these feelings until I get some spiritual commitment back.
The spiritual caird. It had tae be played. They always fall for that one, they just cannae help themselves. I hear her voice thin down to a gasp. – I need to see you, to talk face to face. I’ll be round tonight. When’s good for you?
– Make it eight, I tell her, before signing off and putting the blower down. – Getting rode, getting rode, getting rode, I sing softly to myself, to the tune of ‘Here We Go’. I wave semieuphorically over at Gillman and Inglis who’ve just come into the office. Gillman gives a curt nod, that cunt never displays emotion, but Inglis gives me a big, flouncy wave which sets off a feeling of nausea in my stomach.
Chrissie tonight. Oh well, at least I’ve sorted out a ride. Hardly a hassle-free one though. I’m hoping it’s going to be better than it was the last time. She was a funny cow, the camera seemed to excite her, but when I got out the vibrator she started greeting and going on about Bob and how her life was in a mess. You can never fathom some fenny.
I look at my Scottish Police Federation calendar. December the fifth. Not that long to Christmas, but fuck that crap, the winter’s brek in the Dam comes first. That fuckin dull calendar. I had a top one last year but then that memo came round from Personnel, doubtlessly initiated by arid-twatted dykes like Drummond, stating that ‘pin-ups’ were to be banned. Some fuckin twaddle about negative images of women. If a shaggable bird in the buff is a negative image, then what the fuck counts as a positive one? A fuckin boot like Drummond in a polis uniform? I think not. Same rules apply.
The nausea won’t go away and I have to get out of here early. Ray Lennox is out stalking the hippy community Sunrise fuckers at Penicuik so there’s nobody I can skive off with. I don’t trust Gillman, and Clell’s lost the plot with all this Traffic bollocks. I decide to head up town, and go for a little stroll. The town is mobbed out with Saturday shoppers looking for Christmas bargains. You can almost breathe in the raw greed which hangs in the air like vapour. As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister.
The scene of the crime. Here I am, walking up the Playfair Steps. A young jakey, in filthy, threadbare clathes, holey trainers and sucking on an old purple tin, hopefully holds a styrofoam cup out at me. – Job Centre’s yon wey mate, I point towards the West End.
– Merry Christmas, he says.
– You n aw mate, I smile. – Could be a cauld yin but. I’d check in there for a few weeks if ah wis you, I point at smug grandeur of the Balmoral Hotel, – lit room service take the strain. You know it makes sense.
The jakey shoots me a look of anger which can’t conceal an underlay of sheer terror as he contemplates a cold season on the streets, and quite possibly the end of his miserable life. Still, if he gets enough of the old purple tin in him, he won’t feel the cold taking him slowly.
I head up to the South Side and think about calling in at Alan Anderson’s old boozer in Infirmary Street. I wonder what Alan’s doing now. One of our spectacularly average players of the seventies; there was a factory turning them out. It’s really busy up the Bridges with schemies purchasing shoddy goods from the wog discount stores and students between classes sniffing around the second-hand record shops.
I try to get a look at the scores in the window of a TV shop. In England Man U., Arsenal, Newcastle, Chelsea and Liverpool all won, so it’s as you were. I’m waiting on the Scottish results coming through when a raucous shriek fills the cold air, stripping the flesh from my back. I turn and see a crowd forming across the road. I go over to investigate, pushing past the stupefied ghouls and see a man, about mid-forties, well-dressed, twitching away on the ground in an ugly paroxysm, one arm stiff and clutching his side.
The boy is turning blue and a woman is screaming: – COLIN! COLIN! PLEASE HELP US! PLEASE!
I’m down on my knees at the prostrate figure’s side. – What’s wrong? I shout at her. He seems not to be breathing. He’s pissed himself; a black, wet patch is forming on his groin.
– It’s his heart . . . it must be his heart . . . he’s got a bad heart . . . oh Colin no OH GOD COLIN NO!
I’ve got the boy’s head back and I’m giving him mouth-to-mouth.
C’mon you bastard
I can feel the life draining from him, the heat leaving the body and I’m trying to force it back into him, but there’s no response. His face is white now, he looks like a manikin. I turn to the woman. There’s a wheezing birr coming from her own bleached-out face. – What is . . . what can . . .
– Do something . . . please . . . the words seem to aspirate from a hole in her throat.
I shout at the guy, – C’mon mate . . . you cannae just go . . . I turn to the gaping crowd, – Git an ambulance! JUST FUCK OFF OOTTHE ROAD!
I’m trying external heart compression, applying the pressure, thudding at the guy’s chest, respect and expectation giving way to malevolence as he refuses to respond. I feel his wrist.
There’s no pulse.
LIVE
LIVE
LIVE
– You have to live, I say softly to him. His eyes have rolled into his head.
The woman is screaming in my ear, – COLIN . . . OH NO GOD NO . . .
I don’t know how long passes as I sit alongside this formless thing lying in the stench of its secretions and I’ve got the woman’s hand in mine. I can hear the sirens and I feel the hand on my shoulder. – It’s alright mate. You did more than anybody could do. He’s gone. I look up and see a guy with red hair coming out of his nostrils. He’s wearing a luminous green waistcoat.
The ambulance guys are taking him away. In a sudden, strident motion, the woman grabs me round the waist, her sweet scent merging with his malodorous reek. – Why . . . he was a good man . . . he was a good man . . . why? At first it feels awkward and invasive, but our bodies settle into a natural convergence, we fit each other like a hand in a glove.
– Was he? Was he? I nod, feeling tears rolling down my cheek and I’m rubbing at my face. The woman is in my arms, her head in my chest. I want to hold her forever, to never let her go.
They take the dead man into the ambulance and we break our embrace and I feel the cold shallowness of isolation as she’s led away. I stand up and turn to face the ghouls. It’s the same faces all the time. Like that daft film where they all gather for a tragedy.
– What youse fuckin well looking at? What dae ye expect tae see! Go back tae yir shoppin! Gaun! I flash my badge at them, – Police! Disperse!
The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That’s what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana’s funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.
Somebody’s talking to me. – Who are you?
– Bruce Robertson, D.S. Bruce Robertson, I shout at him. – Lothian’s Police.
– What happened?
I look at the guy, – I tried to save the boy . . . I tried, but he just went . . . he just went . . . I tried to save him.
– How did that make you feel?
– Eh? I ask the cunt. – What the fuck . . .
– Brian Scullion, the Evening News. I was watching you. You did really well D.S. Robertson. How did you feel when he didn’t make it?
I turn away from this spastic and push through the crowd. I slope down Infirmary Street and head mole-eyed into Alan Anderson’s old boozer.
The boy should have stayed alive. That woman, she loved him.